


Exercises in Control

by Del (goddessdel)



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kilgrave's childhood, Or how Kevin became Kilgrave, Pre-Series, making of a monster, meta on Kilgrave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 15:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11316393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessdel/pseuds/Del
Summary: Kilgrave never had a childhood.





	Exercises in Control

**Author's Note:**

> Written: 6/22/17
> 
> Just dipping my toe in the JJ fandom. Starting with the villain, as I tend to do.

Kilgrave never had a childhood.

 

His first memories are of being sick; so terribly sick that he could hardly move and every breath was a sharp agony.

 

He remembers screaming and weeping and willing his body to move with everything he had, but it never obeyed.

 

Those memories are a blur of misery occasionally interrupted by his mother's voice, though he can never remember what she said, if she soothed him or merely wanted the screaming to stop. She certainly never hugged him.

 

No, the only contact he remembers is with needles and tubes and nurses, even that all through sterile gloves.

 

Then the experiments began.

 

A brutal regimen of physical therapy and testing and injections and scans and his parents making clinical notes in his chart while he screamed and cried and begged them to stop.

 

His parents promised he'd get better; that this was going to save him. He never asked to be saved; he only asked for it all to stop. Sometimes, after he learned the word, he used to ask them just to let him die.

 

Nobody ever listened to him.

 

Not until the day he screamed, "STOP!" and they all did.

 

At least, for a moment.

 

His parents - the scientists - they couldn't just leave it alone. They couldn't appreciate that he was cured without trying to figure out why.

 

They couldn't take him in their arms and rejoice in their child - no. They had to know.

 

So they tried again and again and again, until he was too tired to stop them, until he'd lost his voice from screaming, until they managed to give him an anesthetic and did their tests anyway even though - as his mother had insisted several times when he used to beg for oblivion - it could confound the results.

 

Nobody ever listened to him; not unless he made them.

 

Not that he knew what his powers were. In the beginning, he was more frightened of them than his parents were. Sometimes he'd say something and it would be fine but sometimes he'd speak and whoever he'd addressed would act before he could process telling them to stop.

 

It happened with the iron.

 

He'd never wanted to hurt his parents, not then. He just wanted them to pay attention to him, for once. To listen to him.

 

His mother was ironing and ignoring him and, on a childish impulse, spurned and hurting, he suggested that she might as well iron the wrinkles out of her face while she was at it.

 

He heard her scream before he realized what had happened, before he could tell her to stop. Terrified, he cried and shook while she screamed and ran for ice, the smell of burnt flesh lingering in her wake.

 

He apologized and apologized and tried to help, and his mother said she forgave him - that she knew he didn't mean to - but the next morning his parents were gone.

 

The iron was still on the ironing board and he nearly perished in the fire.

 

That was when he learned that people lied.

 

It took weeks to make his way to civilization from the ruins of his childhood home. It was the first time he'd ever interacted with people who weren't his parents or doctors.

 

They ignored him, mostly. Sometimes they helped, until he said something in the wrong way and then their eyes filled with the same fear as his mother with the iron before she left him to die in a fire.

  
People always left him, abandoned him, ran away from him, tried to _kill him_ , the second they could.

 

So he stopped giving them the choice.

 

At first he just wanted someone - anyone - to _stay_ , to _pay attention_ , to _tell the truth_. To _love_ him.

 

It wasn't until he was older that he started using his powers with more purpose than just to survive. When he realized he could have everything he ever wanted if he just used the right words.

 

Oh, there were accidents, sure. The first time he tried properly cursing, well - the less said about that, the better. He was horrified, initially, like he had been with the iron.

 

By the tenth or twelfth time, he decided to write off these little incidents as accidents to be forgotten. He hadn't meant to hurt anyone, after all.

 

It was exhausting, trying to measure out the weight of his every word before he spoke.  Eventually, he stopped trying to be so careful and, if accidents happened, he stopped caring.

 

Why should he care about the meaningless little lives of strangers - about their wants and whims - when no one had ever cared about his?

 

After all, if everyone was out for themselves, wasn't he just better?

 

So he stopped caring about people at all - about the pedestrian masses - about the stray idiot who made the mistake of being rude - and it all became so much easier.

 

There were no more accidental slips of the tongue. If he wanted something, he commanded it. If he was irritated - well, over the years, he found his temper increasingly short and his punishments increasingly creative. There was a certain skill to using what was on hand, after all. It took _finesse_.

 

And it was oh so refreshing to watch a would-be-mugger stab himself by degrees with his own knife or a rude barista pour scalding coffee down their throat until even their screams had dwindled to pathetic gurgles that resembled their own machine.

  
He was just doing his part for humanity - weeding out the rude and rewarding the beautiful, if he fancied.

 

After all, he could do whatever he wanted.

 

And he would.


End file.
